With the coronavirus lockdown, parents and carers are having to help their children learn remotely. Young people will also be turning to their parents, carers or guardians for career support.

This is a challenging time for parents, especially for those with children in their final year of school. The attached Careermag for Parents may be able to help.

It includes labour market information and qualification routes so teenagers can seek guidance from their parents to make well informed decisions on their futures. Parents have always been big influences on young people’s decisions. Given the current pandemic, they will play even more of a role on their teenagers’ options.

I hope this finds you well and that the first Monday without school hasn’t been too stressful. I am not intending to provide daily updates from now on unless there is particular need, but there are a few points that have arisen today that I think are worth sharing:

Well done to those of you who have already established a routine for work; the sooner you do this, the easier it will be and the more productive and happy the coming weeks will be. As per my original letter (click here) our strong advice is that you try and follow a schedule as close to your normal school timetable as possible. So, for example, if you would have had English period 1 and Geography period 2, then start the morning with an hour of English followed by an hour of Geography. Of course, you’ll need to be flexible, but this should be a good starting point.

We are aware that Show My Homework has not always been accessible today. This is because of the huge volume of students across the country who have been trying to access it. We expect this will settle down fairly soon. If there is ever a time you cannot access the site and need work to do, our default advice would be to read a book for pleasure and/or use knowledge organisers for self-quizzing.

Please do not use the school remote desktop for accessing SMHW or Microsoft Teams. This puts too much pressure on the school systems. You are much better off accessing them via the internet directly.

Please bear in mind that it is very difficult for teachers to judge how long it will take you to complete tasks – because obviously this will vary from student to student. For those of you feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work on SMHW, please just do as much as you can in the time you’d normally have for lessons and do not worry if you can’t get it all done.

On the other hand, if you are getting through the work too quickly, you may find some ideas on the ‘Exceed and Excel’ section of the school website. As always, reading a good book is also an excellent use of time.

Unfortunately, it is not possible for students to come and collect exercise books in a way that we can manage without taking unnecessary risks. As per my original letter, please just keep work in a safe place such as a folder or on a USB pen drive.

On a slightly different note, it has been extremely disappointing to hear of students gathering together to socialise in the local area since school closed on Friday. We explained to all students last week why this is a deeply stupid thing to do in the current climate – aside from the risks of contracting Covid-19 yourself, you are being utterly irresponsible by potentially passing it on to others who may be far more vulnerable than you. To those parents concerned, I beg you to be more responsible and not let your children out and about: there really can be no excuse.

For those families of vulnerable children and/or keyworkers:

Thank you to those of you who managed to find alternatives to sending children into school, in line with government advice. There is no doubt that minimising the number of students in school is the best way to help reduce the numbers of people contracting the Covid virus and therefore ease the burden on the NHS. Equally, we remain open for those of you who really do need us. Please email StudentServices@lymmhigh.org.uk if anything changes as regards likely attendance compared to what you have already told us.

Students coming into school no longer need to wear uniform.

The Cat 5 bus from Partington is no longer running. Please contact us if this causes a major problem.

N.b. at the time of writing, we are waiting for the government’s daily press conference (scheduled for 8.30pm) and will be in touch again if anything changes as regards school opening for key workers.

Finally, I would like to thank parents and carers for all the support you have shown the school during this time. We have been overwhelmed by the number of you who have taken the time to get in touch and I want you to know that the staff really do appreciate it.

Thank you to those of you who have replied to the survey letting us know that you will need childcare next week. This means we now have a reasonable idea of numbers and can plan accordingly.

You will appreciate that these plans are very much subject to change, but a few points just for the moment for those of you intending to send children in:

Most importantly, we beg you to follow government advice and only send children into school if there really is no alternative at all. The whole point of school closures is to avoid social contact wherever possible. Any individual who sends their child into school when it is not absolutely necessary is, quite literally, risking the lives of other people in our community. We will be looking at the circumstances of each student this week and really want to avoid too many awkward conversations with parents where we can see it was not essential to send children into school. For example, we would expect most children from older year groups to be able to look after themselves at home for the majority of the time.

Similarly, no child should be sent into school if they are displaying any symptoms of the Covid virus – i.e. a continuous cough or any signs of a temperature.

That said, we are taking our duty to support vulnerable children and those of key workers extremely seriously. The response of staff at school has been magnificent and we all want to do our bit to ensure those of you who really do need to be in work to keep the country going can get in. Please therefore let us know if it would make a difference to you if, for example, we put on some kind of provision at the weekends and/or before and after school. Email any such requests to my PA, Helena Headon (hheadon@lymmhigh.org.uk). I cannot promise anything at this stage but we will do our best to support this if more than one or two of you need it.

As things stand, school buses will run more or less as normal – with one or two ‘duplicate’ services removed. Please click here for the slightly revised timetable (the services highlighted in yellow will not be running) We believe that this will continue but will obviously let you know if anything changes.

Students should come in wearing school uniform tomorrow. This may change.

Please note that our primary concern is to provide childcare rather than education. What exactly we do is still being planned, but we will likely still follow a structure similar to that of a normal day.

We will be encouraging students to practise hand hygiene and social distancing. However, please understand that it is not realistic to be able to guarantee that students are kept 2 metres apart from one another all of the time. Please help to support by talking to your children about the importance of these measures.

We are aiming for physical activity, outside if possible, every day. Therefore, students should bring PE kit with them everyday. They can keep it in school if they wish.

If you are intending to drop students off and/or pick them up at times that are different to the normal school day, then please make sure you let us know by emailing Student Services (StudentServices@lymmhigh.org.uk) Otherwise, we shall assume your child will be in between 8.20am-3.10pm.

I hope this provides sufficient information for the time being, but please contact Mrs Headon with any urgent enquires.